We recently took a 6 hour flight from the East coast to the West coast, and let me tell you I was STRESSED. I know how energetic my 18-month old is. He just wants to run run run. So how was I supposed to make him sit still for 6 hours straight? I read everything I could get my hands on about entertaining children on planes, but a lot of the suggestions wouldn’t work for my kid! He doesn’t have the attention span for a lot of screen time (and apparently doesn’t like headphones), won’t read books for more than a few minutes tops, and has a habit of throwing things that have lots of pieces (such as the duplo legos someone suggested we bring). So I got as creative as possible (and packed as much as possible) to try to entertain him for the duration of the flight. Here’s a list of all the things that did work, at least for a little while:
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Things That Work To Entertain Your One Year Old On an Airplane:
Coloring:
At first I thought he was too young to color since he doesn’t know how to color in the lines, or even on the paper, but then I discovered these washable, non-toxic crayons! The great things about these is when your child inevitably colors all over the tray table on the airplane a simple baby wipe cleans it all up! He did throw a lot of these, and we lost one or two, so it wasn’t perfect, but this gave me at least 10-20 minutes of entertainment on two different occasions. He loved seeing the colors show up everywhere!
Play-mobil:
This one is good for kids that are starting to get into imagination play, because that’s mainly what it is. My son is starting to get really into “pretending” especially when it comes to animal toys. We feed our animals, walk our animals, play with our animals, anything you can think of. Over the course of the plane ride a collection of play-Mobil horses gave us an hour of entertainment. To be fair, we had a HUGE collection of horses to play with that we picked up from a second-hand store, so the variety of toys definitely helped with the length of entertainment.
Interactive books:
While sitting and reading books can be kind of boring and only short term entertainment for a lot of one-year olds, interactive books tend to be very interesting! We brought with us Pat the Bunny (which we also shared with an upset little girl across the aisle), See Touch Feel: A First Sensory Book, and Noisy Baby Animals (we turned off the noise and just practiced our animal noises ourselves to avoid bothering all the people around us). These books gave us at least another 20-30 minutes of entertainment.
Busy Toys:
Another great activity to distract young toddlers are busy toys. These are toys that practice a lot of fine motor skills and involve your babies figuring out how to do abunch of tasks, all while sitting down! Some great examples of these are busy boards, the hungry caterpillar busy toy, or various busy books you can find online! I personally made my own, and it served as entertainment for about 15 minutes the first time we pulled it out, and 5-10 the second time we pulled it out. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot but compared to other activities I’ve tried, I’ll take 15 minutes of peace on the plane!
Play Dough:
I will start this off with a disclaimer saying this activity made a mess. I had to pull play dough off soooo many surfaces before I could leave the plane. That being said, when my baby was melting down and we had exhausted every other item we brought with us already, this kept him busy for a full half hour. He did try to eat it multiple times so if you’re looking for a slightly less chemical filled version, check out our homemade play dough recipe! If you’re looking for ways to use play dough to distract your kid you can use it for sensory play, make shapes and animals out of it, or grab some small play dough toys to have fun with!
Snacks:
I packed SO much food for this flight. Anytime he got fussy and bored I just pulled out a new favorite food. I brought every kind of berry, multiple of our favorite fruit and veggie pouches, toddler bars, and so much more. We also took advantage of the free snacks on the flight! I let him open and close the snack containers himself to add to the excitement of it too. And THEN we spent tons of time enjoying the food itself. It kept him full and distracted! Win-win!
Things We Brought That Didn’t Work To Entertain:
Regular Books:
This might be a great tool for some kids but my son is too easily distractable for this. We’d look at each book for 30 seconds maximum. I brought 3 or 4 with us but the non-Interactive books weren’t very useful. If your kid isn’t one to sit and read with you at home, they probably won’t on the plane either. Save yourself some space and only pack things they’ll love!
Screen-Time:
Again, this might be a great tool for other kids, but I recommend introducing headphones to your kids before the flight. I didn’t practice putting them on Ollie in advance, and he was not having it. I thought downloading movies would be a great distraction but we couldn’t even start a movie due to him not being a fan of the headphones. Oh well, you live and learn.
Stuffed Animals:
I buy tons of stuffed animals because I think they’re cute and my baby loves to touch them, but they don’t get played with that much! We do like to play some imagination games with them at home, but they’re just too big to have multiple out for a game on an airplane. The play-Mobil worked much better for animal imagination play, and beyond that we never really touch the stuffed animals. I brought three, and honestly, they just took up space in the bag.
Sticker Books:
I saw online someone recommend a sticker book as plane entertainment and thought it’d be worth a shot. Ollie had never been around stickers before and immediately tried to eat one. In turn, that made me panic due to them being a choking hazard, and I immediately put them away. 0 minutes of entertainment, and a waste of money for such young kids. I can see how it’d be a great tool once they’re older though!
Conclusion:
Plane rides can be stressful, but you’ll survive. People are a lot more understanding than you think, so don’t let yourself get too stressed about the journey. Hopefully you found some things on here that can help you plan for as smooth a ride as possible! Most importantly though, remember to bring things that work for you and your baby. Good luck! It’ll be over before you know it and you’ll be glad you did it:)